


Rough Night

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 14:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14833809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: Mal lived on the Isle of the Lost, it wasn't like she ever expected five-star luxury sleeping arrangements. But even on The Isle, having to sleep on the floor was something she definitely never thought she'd need to resort to. Especially when the reason for doing so was Evie unceremoniously kicking her out of their bed.





	Rough Night

**Author's Note:**

> from an anonymous request on tumblr

Evie’s eyes were the ultimate contradiction at this particular moment in time, glazed with hard ice yet burning with dangerous flames at the same time.  
  
“…You did not.”  
  
Her voice was a growl. Evie didn’t growl.   
  
“…I didn’t  _mean_  to.”  
  
Mal’s voice was sheepish. Mal was never sheepish.  
  
“Mal!!” Evie snapped.  
  
Mal of The Isle actually jumped, actually faltered as the beautifully deadly face glaring her down took no mercy.  
  
“It was an accident, E, I swear,” Mal’s hands went up as if staving off a wild beast ready to strike. Such a thing wasn’t so crazy a comparison.  
  
Evie’s perfectly trimmed and sparkling nails dug into the skin of her palms, inciting a sting that would be accompanied by deeply gouged half-moon marks whenever she finally decided to unclench her fists. Staring at the smoldering wreckage that was her dress wasn’t exactly helping matters.  
  
“E, they only  _just_  brought the barrier down like, a week ago. I’m not used to these powers yet,” Mal pleaded her case.  
  
With magic allowed back on the Isle of the Lost, the otherwise comical sight of steam shooting from Evie’s ears was a not-so-comical and definite possibility here.  
  
“I was going to spray paint some new stuff on the walls, I didn’t want your dress to get messed up, but when I went to move it into your room—”  
  
“You set it on  _fire?!”_  Evie rounded on Mal, eyes an even more deadly storm of flames and ice. “I spent  _months_  on this dress, Mal. I waited forever for the right materials and colors and fabrics to come on the stupid Auradon barge, and all the nights of sneaking away from my mom’s ‘princess lessons’ so I could come to the hideout and work on it? And you just go and ruin it?!”  
  
Mal was the daughter of Maleficent. No one dared to raise their voice at her the way Evie was daring to do now, but then again, no one but Evie could flash a glare and a scowl and make the daughter of Maleficent feel so incredibly small.  
  
“Evie, I’m sorry! I know how hard you worked on this, I know it was your dream dress, but I promise it was an accident!”  
  
Apologizing and promising. Again, things that only Evie could bring out of Mal. Evie was out of things to say, lips parting and closing with indecision as she struggled for something new to shout, something different to yell.  
  
“Look, maybe we can fix it, E.”  
  
“Fix it?? Look at it, Mal! It’s a pile of ash!”  
  
“Then I’ll help you design a new one!” Mal took a pleading step forward, Evie took a stubborn one back. “I have magic now, maybe I could help fashion all the material back, or enchant a needle to sew all on its own, or—”  
  
“I think your magic has done enough for today, don’t you?” Evie icily interrupted.  
  
Now Mal was the one at a loss for words as her best friend stormed away, away and into her adjoining room. Mal was thankful the hideout didn’t have any doors to be slammed in her face. Evie was livid over the fact. And as Mal shuffled over and crouched down to the floor, wondering where to start in cleaning up her charbroiled mess, she heard the sound of soft crying drifting out from the next room over. It made her desperately wish for the yelling to come back. Fashioning a broom and dustpan out of a large retired paintbrush and a moldy cardboard box, Mal swept away what was left of the dream dress, with the lingering smell of smoke and burnt fabric getting itself stuck in her nose.  
  
Mal in a nutshell, literally ruining everything she touched. The concept of a blessing was something she only came to learn about when she realized that Evie and Evie’s life were the only two things she never seemed to ruin, but now she could furiously scratch  _that_ mercy off the list. Leave it to Evie to somehow dream up and create beauty in the trashed, hideous prison that was The Isle, and leave it to Mal to take that away from her, to take what Evie had put her heart into and set it ablaze without a thought. Destroying hearts; Mal supposed that was what made her a villain.   
  
Such morbid thoughts only came to her with more and more intensity as she listened to Evie crying in her room, the sounds muffled as she obviously tried to hide her tears in a tattered pillow, just as obviously not wanting to give Mal the satisfaction of knowing she’d driven her into such a state. But Mal found absolutely no satisfaction in it, and if she thought for one second she’d be anything remotely close to welcome she would storm right in there and give even more apologies, even more promises.  
  
If it were any place other than The Isle it would’ve all seemed shallow and superficial; Evie going to pieces over a silly material possession that her talented hands could bring to life again if only they were given the time. But as it were, it  _was_ The Isle, and if there was one thing Isle denizens knew, it was treasure. People treasured different things now than they did in their days of unchecked villainy, but still, they knew how to see value. They treasured meals, as they were hard to come by, even if the best of them were crusty and stale and riddled with mold. They treasured warm clothes when nights grew cold, and sturdy roofs over their heads. Jafar couldn’t shake his old ways and still valued  _actual_ treasure, holed up in his store and counting coins from sun up to sun down for no other reason than to elicit a twinkle from his eye. Yes, the prisoners of The Isle still knew how to treasure, maybe even especially so now that they lived with nothing.  
  
Evie treasured her fashion, her talent for taking herself far away from her island troubles when she opened up a sketchbook and got to work, her talent for bringing color and beauty into her otherwise dreary life.  
  
And despite her mother’s insistence not to, Mal treasured Evie. She treasured the hours she got to pass at her side, she treasured the smile that was the second most beautiful thing on the island besides Evie herself, and she treasured the tinkling laughter from Evie’s lips that brightened even the darkest of dark days. The dress fiasco may have been a crazy accident, really and truly, but it didn’t mean that Evie wasn’t entitled to be mad.  
  
Although the hideout came with plenty of room for the girls and for their friends Jay and Carlos, Mal and Evie had grown to share a room, share a bed even. All Mal wanted to do was curl up beside Evie on that bed with her head tucked against Evie’s back and speak soft apologies to her over and over again until the crying stopped. Mal was a very smart girl, but irregardless, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she wouldn’t be sleeping with Evie tonight.  
  
Night had already fallen, and when the heartbreakingly quiet crying from the nook of Mal and Evie’s room ebbed away, the light from the one single lamp in there clicked off. A heavy sigh carried Mal all the way around as she too turned out lamps and unplugged strings of lights, and to the worn sofa of what passed as the hideout’s living room where she dropped down wearily and stretched out on her back.   
  
Leather was a fashion statement, certainly not something ever meant to be slept in. Taking her green and purple jacket off and draping it over the armrest at her feet did little to make the sleep on her improvised bed any comfier, not to mention that springs with varying levels of rust poked through the moth-eaten fabric of the couch and jabbed Mal with every twist and turn she employed to get comfortable. It wasn’t as if either of the boys would mind Mal taking one of their beds for the night—or as if they could stop her, really—but Evie was right in saying that Mal had caused enough trouble already, she wasn’t about to go and accidentally set something of Carlos or Jay’s on fire.  
  
She didn’t know how long she fought to get some sleep, but it was long enough for her body to ache and her eyes to grow bleary as sleep dangled just beyond her reach, just out of her grasp. Mal could only take the stabs of rusted metal and the squeaks of ancient springs for so long until she just gave up, slipping down onto the floor where there were no stabs, no squeaks.  
  
Her bunched-up jacket under her head made the closest thing she was going to get to a pillow, so long as the studs and zippers were out of the way. It was colder there on the floor with the nighttime air sinking low around her, and curling up tightly on her side was only a slight relief. She figured that surely this was what she deserved after what she’d done tonight. Breaking Evie’s heart wasn’t an action that came lightly.  
  
Finally, Mal managed to make it to the precipice of sleep, shivering slightly and sore from the hard ground beneath her, but still, it was something. Although that hard-earned something was snatched away from her at the very last moment, as what was the soft padding of footsteps sounded like drumming stomps with Mal’s ear pressed to the floor. She peeked one eye open with a groan, lifting her head from her crummy jacket pillow and waiting for her sight to readjust to the dark.  
  
Evie stood over her, wrapped snugly in a blanket.  
  
“…E?” Mal propped herself up on one elbow. “What are you doing out of bed?”  
  
“…Not sleeping very well without you,” Evie murmured, pulling her blanket tighter around her.  
  
She lowered herself to sit down on the floor, right next to Mal.  
  
“…M, I know it was an accident,” she whispered.  
  
Mal quickly shook her head.  
  
“Evie, don’t. Don’t tell me that makes it okay. You worked so hard on that dress, and you were so proud of it, and then I went and…I messed it all up.”  
  
Evie reached a hand out from the warmth and safety of her blanket to brush her fingers through Mal’s hair.  
  
“There will always be more dresses, Mal. I can always make more. But not without a good night’s sleep. Or, you know, a decent night’s sleep. Pretty much all we can get here on The Isle.”  
  
Mal sat up, taking the hand that was blissfully combing her hair and squeezing it tight before lacing her fingers through Evie’s.  
  
“I really am sorry,” she sincerely said, eyes big and pleading for forgiveness in the dark.  
  
“Well, I’m not sorry that you have magic now.  I wouldn’t wish for the barrier back even if it meant saving all the dresses in all the world. Magic is a part of who you are.”  
  
“Who I am is just a troublemaking villain kid out to wreck everything you care about,” Mal glumly muttered.  
  
“…Mal,  _you_  are what I care about. And I’m not about to let you sleep here on the floor when this blanket is big enough for two and there’s a spot just ready and waiting next to me in our bed.”  
  
So with Evie’s gentle smile leading the way, Mal followed her back to their room, where she was able to change into pajamas and rest a sorely aching body in a bed far softer than the floor. Evie was content to let the whole escapade finally drop as she rolled onto her side, facing away from Mal, but Mal still had her wish to speak apologies and promises. She sat up halfway, leaning over Evie and taking a moment to just watch her breathing in, breathing out. A picture of peace.  
  
“…I’ll never make you cry again, E,” Mal’s whisper was quiet yet firm.  
  
Evie moved again, laying herself flat on her back to gaze up at Mal’s intense face.  
  
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she wisely warned.  
  
“I can keep it!”  
  
“No you can’t. Because you love me, right?”  
  
Mal’s jaw dropped. She never dared to say something like  _that_ to Evie. But where Mal gaped, Evie giggled.  
  
“You don’t have to make that face, I know it’s true. I love you too, M. And sometimes love hurts people, even if it doesn’t mean to.”  
  
Mal frowned.  
  
“E…”  
  
Evie seemed unperturbed, knowing she was speaking the truth.  
  
“But…” she reached a hand up with a little smile, cupping Mal’s cheek. “…Just as long as we don’t go to bed angry. That, you can promise me.”  
  
Mal didn’t even have to think it over.  
  
“Then I promise you,” she said right away. “No going to bed angry.”  
  
The dark was brightened by Evie’s smile as Mal laid her head down on Evie’s chest, the best and coziest pillow she could ask for. The heartbeat in her ear was steady and soothing, the rhythm of it easily pulling her down into the fog of sleep.  
  
“Goodnight, Evie,” she murmured, nuzzling into the crook of Evie’s neck.  
  
She was warm, the kind of amazing warmth that enveloped Mal like a hug and gave her a rare feeling of safety, something all too scarce on The Isle. And Evie herself felt the safest she ever did too with Mal falling asleep on top of her, protectively, as if no dark or dangerous thing lurking their island prison would ever get to her while Mal was there to watch over her.  
  
“Goodnight, Mal.”  
  
Safety, another treasure of The Isle. But two young girls lightly tangled up together in sleep and dreaming side by side would always treasure each other most of all. 


End file.
